Abolition of the voting age?

[synthesis]

I have been circling an idea in my head for some time now. The general idea may not be new - but I do not know if my rationale has been put forth yet.

Before I start, I would like to clarify something to make sure that my motives are not in question. I can vote - and will do so in the election. I am twenty years old; my proposition has no basis in my own age.

Should we abolish the voting age?

Whenever this idea has been suggested, people always challenge the proposal with charges of political irresponsibility on the parts of children. "Have you talked to any 15-year-olds recently? Do you really think they can be trusted to have a say in our nation's affairs?" The person who originated the topic will defend themselves by saying that adults can and will be irresponsible as well. Eventually, the topic usually degenerates into some variation on the human rights card. "All people should be enfranchised."

Age is very different from any other factors involved in discrimination because it is universally impermanent. If we explore the other groups historically discriminated against, we can easily discern that you cannot change the fact that you are of an ethnic minority, that you are a woman, or that you are gay. Well, you can change the first two, but the surgery required generally leads to even greater social ostracism than there ever was in the first place. Nor would you want to change those facts regardless. The goal has never been to make black people not black, or females not female, or homosexuals not homosexual, but to demolish the social conditions that make those of that particular minority worth less in the eyes of society and state.

Even the other major "special interest group" - the poor - are relatively permanent in status when compared with age. As I said, age is completely differently from the rest in that your transition from 'child' to 'adult' - in the eyes of the law - is inevitable. Biologically, everyone has been a child and everyone will be an adult. Unless you are imprisoned or dead, you will have the right to vote sooner or later if you are an American citizen. This is why I think the usual line that advocates enfranchising the youth is disingenuous.

Not to mention that the usual counterargument, in modern society, is quite true. I hate to say it, but a lot of kids are morons. This has been apparent to me when I was little, when I was a teenager, and now, as I move into 'adulthood.' Many are ignorant and politically apathetic. (Note the latter adjective.)

That's why I think that abolition of the voting age cannot be another piece of soulless legislation like others have suggested. If we enfranchised the youth of today, it could very well be disastrous. True abolition would require a monumental shift in society - and most importantly, in the realm of education.

As has been repeated for centuries, the essence of any semblance of democracy is education. Jefferson knew it and everyone after him knew it, and people now seem to be catching on. If we enfranchise the youth, we must have a gargantuan increase - and complete reform - in our education system to ensure that children are not being exploited (and hopefully, at some point, influenced at all) by political parties, religious institutions, or their peers and family. There must be a 'check-and-balance' type system to prevent the educational institution from swaying the opinions of children in any way, shape, or form. Teachers who attempt to influence their students must be immediately replaced, and any attempt by students to sway other students must be reprimanded harshly.

Children must be provided only with every piece of information necessary to make informed decisions.

At this point, you may be wondering what the justification for this overhaul is. Things are working fine as they are, or if they aren't, this certainly isn't our biggest problem.

But, at the root of it all, I think it just might top a great deal of other things. There is no incentive at all to train children to be politically active until they are of voting age. When most people reach that age, their brains are relatively developed and they are often set in their ways for the rest of their life. They have generally spent the first eighteen years of their life in a total political stasis, and this often leads to spending the rest of it only involved to the extent that it greatly affects them.

So, what's the point of it all? If we start educating children to be politically active from birth, we will be doing nothing less than ensuring the free thought and free choice of every citizen alive from the moment they can begin to comprehend such things. A society organized around such things has the potential to be truly free.

Can it be done quickly? No. Will the shift be easy? Not necessarily. But I think, after it's all done, the increase of activity in the public arena of politics will be like nothing we have ever seen before.

I would like the thoughts of this board on my ideas. Perhaps there is some giant fault I have overlooked - I am not sure. I have been toying with this idea for some time, but I have never previously attempted to coalesce the various factors into a single argument.

Constructive criticism would be nice.

[187]

It's a tough issue.

In my opinion, voting should be done by people who are educated as to who and what they are voting for. Now are younger people educated and prepared to handle voting? Or does full awareness of exactly who and what they are voting for come from factual education and passive observance? In my opinion, at any age that a person can demonstrate comprehension is when they should be allowed to hit the polls.

Any sort of preventative measure against "voter duping" should be considered.

[Individual]

I believe that 18 is a proper age.

In certain cases, possibly the voting age could be lowered to 16, however the majority of teens (again, do not compare Che-Lives users) are not always in the know on politics that surround them.

Like you said, their are immature adults, however it is more likely for someone over the age of 18 to have a full, or generally understood concept of American politics.

I believe that the voting age is in its correct place, and should not be lowered.

[synthesis]

In certain cases, possibly the voting age could be lowered to 16, however the majority of teens (again, do not compare Che-Lives users) are not always in the know on politics that surround them.

Like you said, their are immature adults, however it is more likely for someone over the age of 18 to have a full, or generally understood concept of American politics.

...Did you read my post? :blink:

[Individual]

haha.

Figured this would happen. Read about a few lines, then figured screw it. It was long, and I was lazy. :unsure:

So no I did not read it. Does my post sound that crazy that maybe I should go back and read it?

Am I even on the right page here? haha.

[synthesis]

Well, I dealt specifically with the content of your post.

[Guest1]

lol, I love people who do that.

and then they reply anyways.

DyerMaker, I'm for the abolition of the voting age when the aforementioned restructuring fo the education system is implemented. However, until then, I believe that the age should be 16 at max. I might even lean towards 14. 16 sounds more reasonable for now though.

Yeah, a lower voting age, in my opinion, would lead to the implementation of much more progressive social policies. What is my reasoning behind this?

Well, I can count the people 16-18 who I've met who had anything against homosexuals, or gay marriage. Instead of waiting for the fuckers who are set in their ways to die off and leave the new generation to bring the open, progressive laws into place, they could start affecting change right away.

Plus, most teens I know may not know much politically, but they know what they want. They all support cheaper education, better healthcare that remains free, these are their priorities. If they were exposed to the political scene, they would learn which parties have what they're looking for. The New Democratic Party of course.

Anyways, this is the shittiest post I've ever written. I'm sorry. I'm gonna go kill myself slowly with some pills now.

[monkeydust]

Dyermaker:

Personally, whilst not by any means a Blairite, I take the New Labour line here, I would like to see the age lowered to 16. But not any less.

You make the interesting point thatchildren should be educated so that they can make an 'informed decision'. Certainly this is a fair point, if a 14 year old knows as much as an 18 year old about Politics why shouldn't he vote?

We can educate people from any age about Politics, but somwhere we clearly have to draw the line. Most children, under 14 for example may know a lot about Politics, but their actual intellectual capacity, on the whole will not always be sufficient to make an objective, unbiased logical decision.

In my opinion, under the age of 16 most Teens will often make irrational decisions on whims, without a logical basis and without objectively thinking things through. In short, they are often immature. I personally don't think that they should be allowed the vote on tis basis, however objective we make their education, they will often be subject to illogical persuasion. However 'fair' you force a Teacher to be, their opinions will often implicitly be carried forth to their students.

So children may be informed, yet not mature enough to make a reasonable decision.

I personally very much advocate Political education, as you say it will prevent 18 year olds from living in 'political stasis'.

16 year olds on the other hand, can serve in the army, be taxed etc etc. They should be allowed to decide, in my opinion.

[SittingBull47]

Maybe not abolish it entirely, but lower it to say 16. Of course this too would be a waste of time in America, considering that the popular vote doesn't count for shit. It's all about the electoral colleges.

[LSD]

There are several good arguments for lowering the voting age, several of which were mentioned already, but abolishing it?

The problem with such a proposal is the role of parents in influencing children. When children are youg their parents are their primary influences and while under a certain age are liable to accept their parents words on political issues as truth. Therefore, it is almost certain that an 8 year old will vote for the party/person that his/her parents tell him/her to vote for. This effectively just gives more political power to people who choose to have children and their political ideas.

This is why we must keep the voting age above a certain point such that, at the very least, those who can vote are mature enough to be able to have fully independent ideas. For no matter how good one's education, for a child, the education comming from home will always be stronger.

[antieverything]

I've actually noticed the opposite in attitudes of youth--at least here in America. Research shows that young people are overwhelmingly conservative here...even college students, who are characterized as pot-smoking commies, overrepresents conservative view-points.

If not the voting age, we should sure as hell abolish the drinking age! I'm sick of being a second class citizen, denied equal protection under the law, because I am under 21!

[toastedmonkey]

If its completely abolished, would that not mean a new born child could vote?
how is that possible?

Children under a certain age, will be subjected to greater amounts of propaganda and co-hursion. Childrens TV programs will be dominated by politics, for example, whoever owns the teenage ninja turtules, they have a certain political persuasion, lets say Conservative, you'll find the turtules would be Conservative. And the kids, well if there super heros are Conservative then they are too.
Also parents could encourage their children to vote a certain way, with this being drummed into them at such an early age it could prevent them from ever straying.
Im sure there are some "rich" kids who are communist, but perhaps that is because politics wasnt brought into thier childhood, or because they had 'poor' friends or simply they had the room to look into things like communism - they were allowed to stray. That room wouldnt be there, at the moment they arent 'needed' to think about politics.

[synthesis]

Man, I'm not sure whether people just didn't read my post or they didn't understand what I was getting at. As I said in the original post, this doesn't have anything to do with lowering the voting age - soulless legislation - this is about reconstructing our entire society.

If we enfranchise children from the second they are able to comprehend the concept of democracy, this forces us to start teaching them critical thinking and objectivity from that same point to ensure an uncorrupted public arena. As far as I know, critical thinking is not even taught at all as a course, anywhere, until college. I only know of one college that teaches it, but there may be others.

What no one seems to be remembering here is that all children will eventually be adults. A child with the concepts of free, objective, and rational thought instilled in him or her since preschool will eventually grow to be an adult with the ideas of free, objective, and logical thought assisting him or her in making rational and objective decisions for the rest of his life.

You could say that our education system could teach these things anyways, and I would ask you - what's the incentive? It would likely wind up a half-hour class: students shuffle in, the talkative kids discuss the previous night's homework, the quiet kids say nothing, the "clowns" slack off, the teacher assigns the next night's homework and everyone leaves to talk about other stuff so as to avoid thinking about these concepts. That isn't what I want at all.

By enfranchising children from the point where they are able to comprehend democracy, we would create material conditions forcing the education system to concentrate on teaching logic, rationalism, and objectivity or risk everything you comrades predicted might happen.

P.S. To those worried about parents influencing children, I would remind you that part of this new system of education will require the teachers to repeatedly inform their students that their parents, the media, and even the teachers themselves can and often are wrong. That's the whole foundation of this concept.

"Question everything."

[Don't Change Your Name]

Originally posted by Lysergic Acid [email protected] 26 2004, 03:12 PM
The problem with such a proposal is the role of parents in influencing children. When children are youg their parents are their primary influences and while under a certain age are liable to accept their parents words on political issues as truth. Therefore, it is almost certain that an 8 year old will vote for the party/person that his/her parents tell him/her to vote for. This effectively just gives more political power to people who choose to have children and their political ideas.
You took the words outta my mouth. In fact 17 years old still can't seem to make their own decisions. NO, WHAT AM I SAYING???? 99% OF THE PEOPLE SHOULDN'T EVEN VOTE!!!!!!!!!!! This is a problem caused by representative "democracy", where the 4 candidate who are financed by the most important corporations are the only alternatives for most people. They never hear about the other 25 alternatives. Things like "it doesnt matter who I vote because people will make x win anyway", "he looks honest and respectable, the other competitor looks like a corrupy, so that's why I vote him", "things were better when he was in government", "i vote for x because y will take us to communism", and such crap are pretty usual in "thinking" people. So reforming the current "democracy" is useless. We need direct democracy, more face to face discussion on different issues, and that being thaught at kids so that they learn to manage their issues since they are young, through debate, analysing every option, creating new ones, etc. Then people will be able to vote since they are 16 years old (if not even earlier), but until they day this is implemented and people actually start caring about governing, we are going to live in this corporative dictatorship.


Children under a certain age, will be subjected to greater amounts of propaganda and co-hursion. Childrens TV programs will be dominated by politics, for example, whoever owns the teenage ninja turtules, they have a certain political persuasion, lets say Conservative, you'll find the turtules would be Conservative. And the kids, well if there super heros are Conservative then they are too.

Exactly. But I don't think 4 year old kids will be allowed to vote. Anyway, their brain isn't that developed by that age and they will be influenced by mom and dad.

[synthesis]

This is a problem caused by representative "democracy", where the 4 candidate who are financed by the most important corporations are the only alternatives for most people. They never hear about the other 25 alternatives. Things like "it doesnt matter who I vote because people will make x win anyway", "he looks honest and respectable, the other competitor looks like a corrupy, so that's why I vote him", "things were better when he was in government", "i vote for x because y will take us to communism", and such crap are pretty usual in "thinking" people.

I think you missed the point. The idea isn't simply to get people to vote. It's to get people to start questioning things they normally never would simply because they have grown used to seeing it and identifying it but never actually having the ability to change things simply because they aren't enfranchised.

In other words, I think a lot of people are using "a voter" and "a politically conscious person" interchangeably. It seems to me that placing a restriction on the voting age is simply an acclimating device for those in power to try to get people to accept the system before they have the ability to change things. Usually it works - given the population of this board, I'd say sometimes, it doesn't.

But there needs to be more, and we need to be stronger and more influential. I think there would be many, many more people questioning the status quo if they weren't legally forced to accept it for the first eighteen years of their life.

Yes, you're right that our current representative democracy can change very little. But you have to look beyond the form this idea takes and get to the function of it.

It seems to me that the real reason to support this idea is because, deep down, it instills the idea in every person it affects that all things should be questioned and all authority must be justified or otherwise struck down, and more importantly, that you do - or should - have the ability to challenge something you aren't in agreement with. That, I think, is the real issue at hand, not simply bringing more votes into the ballot box.

[shyguywannadie]

I am for the abolition of the voting age, there are many(maybe majority) of adults that dont know hardly anything about politics.

Also on a slightly differant subject, the legal age (in the UK) for someone to be able to run for mayor/prime minister etc is 21 which i think is too high, should be 16 i think.

[monkeydust]

Dyermaker:


It seems to me that the real reason to support this idea is because, deep down, it instills the idea in every person it affects that all things should be questioned and all authority must be justified or otherwise struck down, and more importantly, that you do - or should - have the ability to challenge something you aren't in agreement with. That, I think, is the real issue at hand, not simply bringing more votes into the ballot box.


An interesting theory. Still thoug, does giving everyone the vote necessarily make them more interested in questioning beliefs?

Perhaps it will be counterproductive. Myself, I don't support our methods for 'representative' 'democracy'. Systems such as Britains Plurality voting system, in my opinion are far from ideal. Perhaps many agree with me, many more may also share these beliefs later on.

Yet there are many who support our "representational" methods, simply because they know nothing else, they've always been told it's 'the way thing's are' and 'the way they will stay'. I personally reckon that if, everybody was given the vote, from all ages, they would know nothing else. Political differences would be constrained by the limits of the ballot box, challenges of ideals may be limited to change every 4 or 5 years alone. If you are brought up, politically focusing singly on the changes the ballot box offers, will you try to think beyond such measures? I think many will not. Many people, too young to vote, are more interested in other democratic means such as pressure groups, this is no bad thing.

I think that Political education could stimulate political awareness in many people, one doesn't however, need to be able to vote to be politically aware, or even to be politically active.



shyguywannadie:


Also on a slightly differant subject, the legal age (in the UK) for someone to be able to run for mayor/prime minister etc is 21 which i think is too high, should be 16 i think.


Would you trust a 16 year old to run a country? Even an intelligent 16 year old, will lack the maturity or experience to make decisions as well as a comparatively older individual. Moreover, someone so young would often lack the presence to effectively lead a nation.

Furthermore, History has shown us how Young Leaders (King's emperors etc.) are prone to manipulation and deference to their 'advisors'. I wouldn't advocate having young leaders of state at all.

[apathy maybe]

DyerMaker has got a number of very good points. But one that I think he missed (I may just have missed it), currently children don't have any representation. Nobody specifically represents children’s interests anywhere. This is a major flaw which abolishing voting age would fix. If children could vote (even if they weren't educated to the degree suggested) politicians would be forced to actually listen to what they want, rather then just pretend to which is what they do now.

While restructuring our society would be nice, we may as well just go to anarchy or communism or whatever.

[cormacobear]

I think it should be lowered at least to 16.

It almost was here a few years ago. Two high school girls had their case argued all the way to the supreme court of Canada and sort of one. The judges stated that yes their not being allowed to vot was a violation of several of their other Charter rights, but because the age of majority was specifically enshrined in the Charter it would take an act of parliment to change it.

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

I think that this would be a really good way to introduce kids to politics. So many people just don't care. It seems like there are a lot of the kids that are conservative, which I can't understand why... Today in school in my social studies/history class we were talking about why other parts of the world "don't like america" Some of the comments were slightly amusing... "Because we are better than them and they think they can be better than us."

[revolutionindia]

Considering the haphazard development of individuals in todays world May i suggest increasing the minimum voting age to 25 years

[Raisa]

The drinking age, the smoking age, the screwing age, and the voting age should all be paralell to the working age.

[apathy maybe]

What do you think this working age should be Raisa?

I see no problem with children having sex with other children, or with children drinking (responsibly).


(And my other post seems to have disappeared. What I said was basically this,
Children don't currently have representation, they need it; letting them vote is one way of letting them have it.)

[DaCuBaN]

The drinking age, the smoking age, the screwing age, and the voting age should all be paralell to the working age.

I concur: At 16 you start paying tax and national insurance in the UK, you can have sex, you can drive a 150cc or less motorcycle (although I don't see what age has to do with the ability to drive) but you can't drink or vote.

Flatten it off; I say 14 to drink, drive, smoke, vote, shag, and be taxed in our current society.

[Raisa]

Originally posted by Apathy [email protected] 13 2004, 02:23 AM
What do you think this working age should be Raisa?

Im not so sure, something around 14 15 or 16.

[Louis Pio]

When people can be put on trial as adults they should have the the possibility of voting.
It's hypocracy to view people as adults in some cases and then as minors in others.